Thursday, April 24, 2008

I know nothing about the life of the late Dwaine Tinsley. The fact that the book cover looks like a plain brown wrapper is your tip-off that this is a guy who was the cartoon editor for Hustler magazin. He was best known for drawing the "Chester the Molester" cartoons.

In 1989, he was arrested on several charges, including child molestation. The accuser was his stepdaughter, "Veronica."

"'To those in the front lines of the war against child sexual abuse, Dwaine must have seemed the Target of the Decade,' Levin writes. 'He worked for the most despised magazine in the country. He had created the most reviled character in cartoon history. And he thought child molestation -- the most loathsome bogeyman than rattling our national imagination -- a fit topic for humor ....'"

The harrowing trial went forward. Tinsley claimed that Veronica was a cocaine addict who wanted money and a car. When Tinsley didn't acquiesce, she made up a story about being abused.

Neither stepdaughter nor stepdad backed down from their stories. 3,200 of Tinsley's cartoons were allowed into evidence.